The Best of Both Worlds, Part II (episode)
Riker, commanding the Enterprise, tries to prevent the Borg from assimilating Earth and save Captain Picard. (Season Premiere) Summary Teaser Hopes are dashed when the [[USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D)|''Enterprise's]] jury-rigged deflector dish-weapon fails to stop the Borg, who have kidnapped Captain Picard and transformed him into Locutus. Locutus then informs the crew that Picard's knowledge was added to the Borg's, and that they were thus prepared for all courses of action that the ''Enterprise was preparing to take. Act One The Borg then set course for Earth with the Enterprise unable to follow due to damage resulting from using the deflector weapon. Admiral Hanson officially gives Riker the promotion to Captain. At the same time, the Borg have tapped into Picard's knowledge of Starfleet defenses and human nature. A single tear is his only reaction to the DNA rewrites and bio-implants that are assimilating his body. Meanwhile, as Riker and Shelby are discussing repair progress in Engineering, the Enterprise receives word from the armada at Wolf 359. As Admiral Hanson is relaying news that "the fight does not go well," the signal is abruptly cut off. Act Two As the Enterprise completes repairs and heads for Wolf 359, Captain Riker "reluctantly" promotes Shelby to First Officer. The crew discuss several possible methods for fighting the Borg, including heavy graviton beams, nanites, and phaser upgrades, but all possibilities appear to be long shots at best. Riker's pessimism can be heard even in his encouragements that "our efforts in the coming battle will justify Picard's faith in all of us." Guinan, realizing that Riker's pessimism is filtering down through the crew, visits him in the ready room and insists that the only way to beat Locutus and save Picard is for Riker to let go of Captain Picard and throw away everything the captain would have done. As she leaves and Riker ponders his new role as Captain, the Enterprise arrives at Wolf 359 to find a battlefield strewn with dead ships. Within hours the Borg cube had obliterated the armada at Wolf 359, killing Admiral Hanson as well as thousands more. The [[USS Saratoga|USS Saratoga]] is also lost there, as Benjamin Sisko escapes with his son but loses his wife.("Emissary") Act Three With the knowledge that Locutus possesses Picard's tactical genius, Riker devises a strategy to retrieve Picard from the Borg cube. By separating the Enterprise, Riker anticipates that the Borg will completely ignore the saucer section and instead concentrate on destroying the more heavily armed secondary hull. After separation, the primary hull fires an antimatter spread to masks the engine signature from a shuttlecraft carrying Data and Worf. This shuttle is able to penetrate the Borg electromagnetic field, allowing Data and Worf to beam to the cube, kidnap Locutus, and bring him back to the Enterprise. Act Four Rather than fight the now vulnerable saucer section, the Borg resume their course toward Earth. On the Enterprise, Locutus is revived and chastises Riker for putting a whole ship at risk to save just one person. He also tells Worf that the Klingons will also be assimilated, to which Worf replies that they will never yield. Data discovers that a series of subspace signals form the basis of the Borg Collective and goes to work on tapping into the Borg collective consciousness through Locutus. Riker then gets word that the Borg have entered Sector 001. Act Five As the Borg cube breaks through the Mars Defense Perimeter and is heading to earth, too far ahead for the Enterprise to intercept in time, Data begins to interface with Locutus. After establishing several neural links, Data manages to establish a connection with Picard. At this point, the Borg ship halts its approach to Earth, and the Enterprise crew discovers what they believe to be the Borg's Achilles' Heel: their interdependency. Data attempts to implant commands into the collective consciousness to disarm the ship but is unsuccessful. Just as Riker is about to give up hope and ram the Borg ship, Picard fights through to give Data one simple Borg network command: "Sleep." Data successfully implants a command that causes the Borg Cube to activate its regenerative cycle and power down. Shelby leads an away team to the Cube to investigate, and they discover that the cube is experiencing power feedback - either a deliberate self-destruct sequence to prevent Data from gaining further access or an accidental result from regenerating when unnecessary. As the away team returns and the Enterprise moves away, the power feedback destroys the Borg cube. Free from the Borg's control, a shaky Picard begins his rehabilitation, thankful for his escape but deeply troubled by his experiences. With the Enterprise preparing for refits at Earth Station McKinley and its captain safely returned, Shelby returns to Starfleet to help in the rebuilding effort and Riker resumes his post as First Officer. Finally alone in his ready room, Picard stands at his window and looks out at Earth, in the dark sea of space, forever changed. Memorable Quotes "The Borg have neither honor nor courage. That is our greatest advantage." : - Worf "You must let him go, Riker. It's the only way to beat him. The only way to save him." : - Guinan Background Information *While the episodes took place roughly within the same few days, production of "The Best of Both Worlds, Part I" and Part II were actually separated by the summer hiatus, during which time subtle changes were made to sets and costumes. Thus, when the second episode begins, minute details seem to have miraculously changed in the blink of an eye - most noticably different are the lighting on the Main Bridge and Beverly Crusher's hair and uniform. *While several sci-fi publications have voted "The Best of Both Worlds" Star Trek's finest and even in some cases one of science-fiction television's finest pieces, writer Michael Piller and director Cliff Bole have both stated that they felt Part II was a letdown after the strong build up of Part I. *Piller himself did not expect to return to TNG and therefore found himself working on the final details of the plot just days before filming began - more specifically, using the Borg's interdependency against them. *This episode (and its predecessor) was the first in Trek to use the navigational deflector in such a way, a trend that would go on to become a staple of later episodes including "The Loss", "Night Terrors", "The Nth Degree", "A Matter of Time", "All Good Things...", several episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Voyager and even Enterprise's Season 3 finale "Zero Hour". *While the Battle of Wolf 359 would go unseen (except for its aftermath) due to budgetary reasons, portions of the battle were recreated two and a half years later for the DS9 pilot "Emissary." *As the Enterprise travels through said aftermath, several of the destroyed ships are actually Enterprise concept models built for the ill-fated Star Trek: Phase II. There are also remnants of the "destroyed" Refit 1701 from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock as well as several new "kit-bash" starships including the Cheyenne class, Challenger class, Freedom class, Niagara class, New Orleans class, Rigel class and Nebula class. The latter would go on to appear as a fully realized design in "The Wounded" later in the season. *The Mars Defense Perimeter ships, seen as the Borg ship approaches Mars were based on the submarine model used in The Hunt For Red October, dubbed by the staff the "Blue-gray October". *In a later episode, "The Drumhead", Admiral Norah Satie would state the loss at Wolf 359 as 39 starships and nearly 11,000 lives, while Shelby had said the fleet would be back up in "less than a year", the Starfleet would continue to prove shorthanded all the way through Season 5's "Redemption, Part II". *While the Borg force during this episode appeared to be only one cube, later episodes of Voyager including "Unimatrix Zero, Part II", would seem to indicate that humans were not only assimlated at Wolf 359, but also taken back to Borg Space (See: Laura). This seems hard to fathom as the only Borg ship seen in the episode was destroyed. The Borg Queen (Star Trek: First Contact) would also later claim to be present at the Battle of Wolf 359, despite the fact that she acknowledged the destruction of that ship and all the Borg on it. This however, may be the result of multiple Borg Queen clones as implied in later episodes and films. However the queen comments in First Contact that the human mind cannot comprehend what she was saying and that it can be inferred that the borg have some technology that allows them to transport acroos entire quadrents or dimensions. This idea is supported in several trek novels *Wolf 359 itself is the real life third-closest system to Sol after Alpha Centauri and Barnard's Star, 7.6 light years away - a 36 hour trip at warp 9. *While not technically a sequel to this episode, the following episode to air, "Family", would deal with the repercussions of the events seen here, including the repairs to the Enterprise and Picard's personal trauma; though, as seen in First Contact, Picard would never fully recover. *"The Best of Both Worlds, Parts I & II" were included in the 2006 DVD box set Star Trek: Fan Collective - Borg. Links and References Guest Stars *Elizabeth Dennehy as Lieutenant Commander Shelby *George Murdock as Admiral Hanson *Colm Meaney as Miles O'Brien *Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan *Todd Merrill as Lieutenant Gleason References 2367, ''Ahwahnee'', USS, android, antimatter spread, assimilation, battle bridge, Battle of Wolf 359, battle section, ''Bellerophon'', USS, biobed; ''Bonestell'', USS, Borg, Borg Collective, Borg cube, ''Buran'', USS, ''Challenger''-class, ''Chekov'', USS, ''Cheyenne''-class, cutting beam, Danula II, deflector dish, DNA, docking latch, Earth, Earth Station McKinley, electromagnetic field, emergency transporter armband, ''Enterprise'', USS (NCC-1701-D), Federation history, ''Firebrand'', USS, ''Freedom''-class, ''Gage'', USS, Jupiter Station, ''Kyushu'', USS, ''Liberator'', USS, Mars, Mars Defense Perimeter, ''Melbourne'', USS, microcircuit fiber implant, multimodal reflection sorting, nanites, ''Nebula''-class, ''New Orleans''-class, New Providence, ''Niagara''-class, Number one, phaser, plasma coolant, ''Princeton'', USS, ''Rigel''-class, Saturn, saucer section, saucer separation, Sector 001, self-destruct, shields, ''Springfield''-class, Starfleet Academy marathon, starships at Wolf 359, ''Tolstoy'', USS, tractor beam, transporter, type-7 shuttlecraft, United Federation of Planets, warp core Best of Both Worlds, Part II, The de:Angriffsziel Erde nl:The Best of Both Worlds, Deel II